America Is Hard to See

May 1–Sept 27, 2015

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Eight West Eighth

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The Whitney Museum of American Art was established as a place for artists, a legacy it has cherished since its earliest incarnation as the Whitney Studio—an exhibition space opened by the artist and arts patron Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney in 1914 in a townhouse at Eight West Eighth Street in Greenwich Village. With the energetic support of her assistant, Juliana Force, in 1918 she transformed the Studio into the Whitney Studio Club, which was a home for American artists then disdained by the conservative establishment. Over the next decade, the Studio Club expanded into the neighboring townhouses that together served as a social and creative hub for its artist-members. Force regularly organized exhibitions, lectures, and classes and provided American artists financial support (and food and drink) with the backing of Mrs. Whitney.

The works on view in this chapter evoke the diverse activities of the Studio Club, as well as the broad tastes of these two remarkable women. Paintings by Robert Henri, William Glackens, John Sloan, and George Luks are evidence of Mrs. Whitney’s adventurous early advocacy of a group of mavericks known as “The Eight,” proponents of the so-called Ashcan School who favored gritty urban realism. Photographs by Charles Sheeler and Berenice Abbott capture the townhouses’ interiors and the exhibitions held therein, while humorous drawings by Guy Pène du Bois chronicle the characters on the scene. A group of Edward Hopper’s figure studies from life-drawing class there affirm that the Studio Club was a site not just for exhibiting art but for making it. When the Whitney Museum of American Art was founded in 1931, with a collection donated by Mrs. Whitney and with Juliana Force as its first director, the institution’s identity and mission as the artist’s museum were already firmly in place.

Below is a selection of works from this chapter.

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Mabel Dwight (1876-1955), Life Class, 1931

A lithograph of a room of men drawing a woman posing in the nude.
A lithograph of a room of men drawing a woman posing in the nude.

Mabel Dwight, Life Class, 1931. Lithograph: sheet, 13 11/16 × 18 1/16 in. (34.8 × 45.9 cm); image: 9 13/16 × 13 9/16 in. (24.9 × 34.4 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase 33.90

When Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney and Juliana Force opened the Whitney Studio Club on West Fourth Street in 1918, one of their primary goals was to host affordable life drawing classes. They charged artists twenty cents per session; since most members could not afford to pay the hourly rates for professional models, the low price had enormous appeal.

Mabel Dwight’s lithograph Life Class depicts a group of artists packed into the Whitney Studio Club sketching a nude woman in a reclined pose. Edward Hopper is among those in attendance: perched near the center of Dwight’s composition, he is easily identified by his bald head.

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On the Hour

A 30-second online art project:
Maya Man, A Realistic Day In My Life Living In New York City

Learn more about this project

Learn more at whitney.org/artport

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